A contemporary electronics device may often be equipped with a remote control which may be used to operate the electronics device wirelessly from a short distance. In a home, for example, a television set, a DVD player, and a home theater system may be operated by their respective remote controls. Meanwhile, universal remote controls have also become popular to manage multiple devices due to the proliferation of remote controls. Most of these remote controls communicate via infrared signals to their respective controllable devices; common commands issued by remote controls may include switching channels and adjusting volume.
Remote control has continually advanced along with modem technologies and evolved into a rather powerful computing device. For example, with the emergence of smart TVs which integrate Internet and Web features into television sets or set-top boxes, the sophistication of the interaction between a user and a smart TV may continue to challenge the capabilities of remote controls. As an example, it may be inconvenient to use a traditional remote control to input text or control a web interface. As another example, a remote control with comprehensive keys or a full QWERTY keyboard may be cumbersome to learn and use for ordinary users. In short, traditional remote controls may become a bottleneck for human-computer interaction and introduce unsatisfactory user experience.